Time and Man
by mari4212
Summary: Take one sixteenyearold genius. Add the Doctor, Rose, and the TARDIS. Stir carefully, and watch for explosions. A Stargate: AtlantisDoctor Who crossover.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: **Many thanks to my wonderful beta, commodore Norrington. This story is dedicated to celticsky, for her birthday.

**Disclaimer**: Strange a concept as it may seem, I actually do not own either Doctor Who or Stargate Atlantis, nor do I own any of the characters of said shows. I'm merely playing with the ideas, no profit is intended.

**Timeline:** Doctor Who: Ninth Doctor, post _The Long Game_. Atlantis: pre-Stargate program backstory.

Rodney hated many things.

He hated the fact that his parents were too busy arguing to notice that they had kids. He hated the fact that because of this he had to take care of Jeanie in their place. He hated the fact that if he hadn't taught himself how to cook, he and Jeanie could have starved to death and he didn't think his parents would have noticed, except to blame each other.

He hated the fact that they only paid attention to him when he had another allergic reaction. He hated the fact that neither one of them had cared that he'd stopped taking piano lessons. He hated the fact that neither one of them had ever noticed how smart he was, how he'd blown his science and math teachers away. He hated the fact that, because they didn't care enough to listen and sign one tiny little six-page form that he'd already filled out in triplicate for them, he couldn't do the advanced program at the local university, even though the one good science teacher he'd ever had had written a long letter of recommendation to get him into the program a year earlier than he should have been eligible.

And right now, he especially hated the fact that he was packing up to run away and he knew they wouldn't even care enough to look for him. Jeanie sat on the messy bed in his room, staring in wonder as he shoved more clothes into the large black duffel bag. She was eight years younger than him; if he thought he could actually take care of her, he'd take her along with him. But an eight-year-old girl didn't belong on the street, and he wasn't sure he could earn enough working part time to take care of her and take those college courses. She'd be safe enough here, but he couldn't live one more day in this house.

He didn't bother sneaking out; he just gave Jeanie a hug and walked out the front door in the middle of the afternoon. It wasn't as if his parents would notice either way, and he'd have less trouble leaving in the middle of the day. People remembered a teenager on the bus late at night, but that same teenager in broad daylight? Absolutely invisible. And while Rodney hated to be invisible, he'd use it for his own ends and not blink twice.

He'd just cut through the corner of the park and out onto one of the small side streets that would shave an eighth of a mile off of his walk when he heard it. Something that sounded like a motor revving up, with a weird cross-harmonic on it. And when he turned to look into the alley it was coming from, he saw a large blue box fading into view.

This was impossible. Nobody had the technology to do this yet. Whether this was some sort of cloaking device that had failed, or whether that box had actually been transported here from somewhere else, there was no technology that he'd even heard rumors of that could do this.

By now it had come completely into view: a large, dark blue box, absurdly, with the title "Police Public Call Box" emblazoned on it. A door in the side opened suddenly, and a tall, dark-haired man with big ears jumped out before turning and leaning back into the door he'd exited. "Rose, c'mon, I'm not going to wait around all afternoon for you to finish putting your makeup on," Rodney heard the man say. Idly he wondered about the accent, it wasn't anything he recognized immediately, though it sounded vaguely British.

He heard a woman's voice, shouting out from inside the box, "Alright, alright, I'll be out there in a minute. God, it's not gonna kill you to wait five seconds, now is it?" Her voice sounded off, somehow, as if she was calling from far back inside the box. But that was impossible, there wasn't room inside that thing for her to be calling from any distance whatsoever. For that matter, how the hell could the man have been in there at the same time without them being far too close for comfort?

The man turned with a sort of loose-limbed energy, looking with interest at the alley walls, until his gaze fell on Rodney's shocked form. Rodney felt the man's eyes sweep over him, taking in everything from the battered black duffel bag to his untied lace on his ratty sneakers. He heard the man sigh before shouting, "Oi! You over there! You going to do anything but stand there with your mouth open looking like an idiot?"

The insults actually helped Rodney. He'd lived most of his life as the slightly unhealthy geek in a society which favored jocks, far too long to not to be on familiar terms with insults. His active brain and agile tongue had gotten him into trouble, although if the brainless jock had happened to have a sense of humor and more than two neurons to rub together, it had also often gotten him out of that same trouble. The man might have been trying to intimidate him, but it merely got him angry instead.

"An idiot would still be standing there wondering what you were doing in a blue telephone box, not calculating how many of the laws of physics you just disproved by having the interior of that thing be larger than the exterior. An idiot would be wondering where the hell you came from and blaming the fact that he'd seen that box appear from nowhere on having gotten drunk last night, not trying to determine if it was an attempt at a cloaking device that had failed or whether you'd managed some form of matter transmission. And an idiot would be running back to his mommy begging for protection from the scary man, not standing here arguing with you!" His voice had steadily risen throughout his rant; by the time he was done he was only a decibel or two away from full-on bellow.

The man snorted, but his frame relaxed slightly. He looked more amused than annoyed. "Well, at least you've got some spirit. Come on, we might as well gab in comfort, if you're going to want explanations." With that, he turned and headed back into the box.

Rodney might have earned a deserved reputation for being overly cautious about some things, though he was quick to point out that if seemingly ordinary foodstuffs could kill you you'd be a little more careful too, but wild horses couldn't have held him back from following the man into that blue box.

He stepped in, and it was like entering a new world. Suddenly he understood why the woman's voice had sounded so far off. The main room was easily ten times larger than the area inside the box should have been, and he also saw various different doors, which presumably led into other rooms. He dropped his duffel bag in shock as he stared at the room, the graceful supports arching around like something organic, the curving walls, the main console standing on a raised platform in the center of the room. It was fabulous, and utterly impossible. "How did you, I mean, this is beyond anything anyone could possibly do on Earth. This is amazing…who are you? Or should I say what?" he asked.

The man rolled his eyes before speaking. "Articulate lot, you humans. No, no human on Earth could build something like my TARDIS, but then again, I'm not human. I'm the Doctor."

Before Rodney could even figure out which question to start with, like what the hell a TARDIS was, or exactly what this Doctor was a doctor of, they were interrupted by a gorgeous blonde only a few years older than Rodney himself.

"Doctor? Who're you speaking to?" she said, as Rodney stared at her. She also had some kind of accent, English he thought, although it didn't sound like the fancy accents in all the bad B-grade movies that he'd seen. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a T-shirt, but a girl who looked like that didn't need to wear anything fancy to get his hormones revved up. Genius he might be but he was still sixteen, and a pretty girl was definitely still a pretty girl.

The Doctor turned to face her, his expression briefly softening, before he glanced back at Rodney and spoke, "The kid saw the TARDIS land, Rose. Couldn't just let him run off without an explanation. And he hasn't fainted or called me a thing yet, so he's doing better than Rickey or Pretty-Boy ever did."

The girl, Rose, sighed, as if she'd had this argument too many times and only went through the motions because the Doctor enjoyed it. "Mickey'd just been rescued from a vat of living plastic that had eaten him. It's not something that happens every day to us humans, you know. He did much better against the Slitheen." She turned to Rodney and asked, "Right then, since the Doctor is useless at this sort of introduction, I'm Rose. Who're you?"

Ignoring the Doctor's indignantly muttered comments about the relative usefulness of humans versus time-somethings, Rodney responded, "Rodney McKay. Would someone like to actually explain anything here, or should I just keep trying to figure out how many laws of physics have been rewritten just by this "TARDIS", whatever it is, existing?"

Rodney McKay had some spunk, Rose would give him that. The Doctor was at his most Time-Lordly attitude, and over the past three weeks she'd heard far more than she'd ever wanted to about the general stupidity of her species. Sure, Adam had proved to be both worthless and greedy, but did that mean the Doctor had to take it all out on her? And now, of course, this kid. Funny, she'd guess she wasn't more than a few years older than him, but she felt infinitely more mature. Traveling with a Time Lord had affected her more than she'd normally consider.

But that last comment of his was going to drive the Doctor mad. She'd only been with him for a few months, but it was obvious. No one insulted the TARDIS. You could tease him about it, but only once he knew you loved it. Hoping to prevent a war from breaking out in front of her, she spoke up. "It's a time machine. TARDIS is an acronym, stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space."

That did it. The look of shock, or was that glee, on Rodney's face would be enough to deflate the Doctor's ire at his earlier antagonistic stance. She'd already seen that if the Doctor didn't get frustrated with how slowly she grasped a concept, he enjoyed teaching. And this kid, whatever else, wanted to learn.

Sure enough, only seconds after she'd told him what they were in, he exploded into a stream of questions, interrupting himself to correct and answer his own questions half the time. He lost her in the technical aspects about three words in, but he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. The Doctor, for his part, had relaxed and looked like he was just waiting for the torrent to slow down a bit so he could make himself heard before he started answering.

She was about to head back into the kitchen for an extra cup of tea, since it looked like the two of them had settled into a nice long jargon-filled debate when Rodney dropped the big question.

"Can I come with you?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who and all characters recognizable from that series are the property of RTD and the BBC. Stargate Atlantis and it's characters are likewise not mine. I'm just playing around with the ideas and characters of these two series.

**Author's Notes: **This story was vastly improved by the efforts of my beta, Commodore Norrington.

* * *

She'd never forget the hopeful expression on his face as he'd asked to come along. For all of the defensiveness in his speech, his face had been incredibly easy to read, every emotion fully expressed.

Instinctively, she'd turned to glance at the Doctor. He'd tensed up again, and his expression had been stormy. She'd known even before he spoke what the answer would be, and part of her had broken with the knowledge that the teenager was going to be rejected. For a fleeting moment, she'd wished that she and the Doctor had met this boy before they'd dealt with Adam. It hadn't been fair that he had been judged by Adam's actions.

Sure enough, the Doctor had responded with a curt, "No." The boy's face had crumpled, and he had looked as if he had only narrowly avoided bursting into tears as he had grabbed the black dufflebag and fled the TARDIS.

She'd glared furiously at the Doctor, but he had leapt up to the TARDIS console and had started entering in a new set of coordinates. From the set of his back, it had been obvious that he had not been willing to discuss his actions, and that he would have stonewalled any arguments she could have made. She'd turned and fled the console room. In the morning, they'd made up, but things had remained a bit tense for the next few days.

It had been a week since they'd met Rodney McKay. She'd only known him for about a half an hour, but he'd left a dramatic impression. Even now, when she walked into the control room, she almost felt like he should be there, talking with the Doctor or being taught a bit about how to control the TARDIS. She had no doubt that he would have been eager to learn, or that the Doctor would have taught him everything that he thought Rodney could handle.

Maybe some of her reflections showed on her face this morning, because when the Doctor looked up from whatever bit of the TARDIS's innards he was tinkering with today, he frowned. "You're still thinking about the kid, aren't you?" he asked, but his voice was softer, less accusing, than she would have expected given the subject.

She hadn't planned on having it out with the Doctor, but if he was willing to bring it up, she wasn't about to back down. "You hurt 'im. He wanted to come with us, an' you know he wouldn't have been another Adam. He wanted to see the universe and learn, not just use it to get rich." She folded her arms defensively across her chest. She hated this, arguing with the Doctor, but sometimes he didn't think about what would happen to the people he interacted with. And if she didn't call him on it, who would?

The Doctor looked almost affronted. "I know he wasn't another Adam! I'm a better judge of character than that, thank you very much. I was all set to bring him along, till he mentioned what his name was."

"His name? What difference…oh." Rose stopped midway through her sentence. She knew by now the reason why the Doctor would recognize someone's name. "He does something in the future, doesn't he, something important?"

"Very important, Rose." The Doctor looked serious, but less upset now that he'd gotten through to her. "In fact, he's just started the most important part of it by your time. If you like, I'll take you to go see what he becomes." By now, he was shooting her his familiar, slightly manic grin.

She grinned back. "What're we waiting for?"


	3. Chapter 3

"What are we waiting for?"

Even before she'd finished her question, the Doctor had turned to the main console. He flashed a grin over his shoulder at her. "Right then. We're off to visit the city of Atlantis, Pegasus Galaxy, in the year 2006."

He had to have known how much that would shock her. Sometimes she thought he planned these things deliberately, just to provoke a reaction. "Pegasus Galaxy? Doctor, humans haven't gotten past the moon in my time and you're telling me that kid winds up in a different galaxy?"

Turning his attention back to the coordinates he was imputing, the Doctor continued. "Well they haven't exactly told the rest of the planet that they've been traveling off-world for the past nine years or so, but his program's been out there. And when they figured out that the city of Atlantis was in another galaxy, our little Rodney, who's not exactly little by this point, is the head of the science department."

Their conversation was interrupted as the TARDIS started shuddering as it faded into existence on Atlantis. The Doctor glanced up at the coordinates and grinned again. "Another perfect landing, right in the middle of their Gateroom. Right then, shall we pop out and go see what Rodney's been up to here for the past two and a half years?

Rose grinned. This was her Doctor at his most cheerful, and his mood was amazingly infectious at times like these. "Ready when you are, Doctor."

The doors of the TARDIS opened to reveal a beautiful but thoroughly alien looking room, but Rose's attention was distracted from the architecture by a rather anxious group of soldiers aiming a nasty set of guns at her and the Doctor. And behind the soldiers, up on the lighted stairs, a much older Rodney McKay stood there staring at them with an incredulous look on his face. A rather silly part of her mind, the part that was getting used to having dangerous weapons aimed at her after travelling with the Doctor, was glad that there weren't any flies in the room. His gaping jaw and open mouth would have been an irresistible target for the insect to fly into.

The Doctor, of course, was ignoring the guns completely. "Hello, Rodney. Did you miss us?"

This couldn't be happening. This could not be happening. It was absolutely impossible for them to be here, after all this time, looking no different than they had back then.

"Did you miss us?" the Doctor had asked. Miss them? The echoes of that one afternoon aboard the TARDIS had shaped so much of his life after that point. Through the years he'd alternately blessed and cursed the Doctor and Rose for opening his eyes to so much beyond what he'd thought possible and then shutting him off from it. He'd only really moved past the Doctor's rejection of him a few years ago, when Elizabeth had asked him to lead the Atlantis mission's scientific division and he'd realized that he'd have never been able to be here if he'd gone with the Doctor then.

And now here they were, about to change everything in his life again, and the Doctor wanted to know if Rodney missed them!

"McKay…" drawled Sheppard. "Do you want to introduce us to your new guests? Or explain, you know, how the hell they got here?"

Oh great, and now he'd have to deal with Sheppard's deranged sense of humor about this too. This day had officially gone to hell in a handbasket. The only thing he needed now was…

"Rodney? My office, now." Elizabeth, of course, wanting to know who was invading her city this week. And of course they'd only just finished dealing with that idiot, Lucius, so she was going to be more concerned about the visitors than she would be normally. Perfect. Unless the wraith invaded this afternoon, the day could not get any worse.

From the look on his face, Rose thought it was pretty obvious that Rodney wasn't exactly pleased to see them again. And it didn't help that the Doctor was grinning like an idiot at the guards with guns, big guns to boot, who were escorting them into some sort of conference room. Honestly, if he'd mentioned how much trouble it was going to be to go check on Rodney, she might have thought better of it. She guessed she should consider herself lucky that no one had started shooting at them yet, though if the glare from the muscular guy with the dreads was any indication, that still might happen.

So now they were waiting impatiently for Rodney to explain to this Dr. Weir lady who they were. Or at least, she was waiting impatiently. The Doctor looked like he was content to lean back and see how far he could bend the back of the chair without tipping himself onto the ground or breaking it. It was taking a lot longer for Rodney to fill the others in than she would have thought, given that they'd only spent an afternoon together. But finally Rodney and Dr. Weir and four other people who she hadn't been introduced entered the conference room.

"Well," said Dr. Weir as she sat down across from them and pulled her chair close to the table. "Dr. McKay has told me a bit about you, and he doesn't think you're a threat to the city, but we're still curious as to why you're here. Would you care to explain?"

The Doctor abruptly pulled himself forward out of his sprawl and grinned madly. "Oh, that? Rose was a bit upset that we had to leave Rodney behind last week, so I thought I'd bring her forward and show her what he's been up to. And it's been a while since I came to visit Atlantis, so I figured we'd kill two birds with one stone. We just dropped in to say hi, maybe grab a cup of tea, and then we'll be off."

There was a derisive snort from the cute American with the puffy hair. "You came all this way to say hi to Rodney?" That comment earned him a huff of indignation from Rodney and a glare from Dr. Weir. Privately, Rose decided he wasn't as cute as she'd initially thought.

The distraction seemed to relax Rodney slightly, and he shifted his focus back to her and the Doctor. "What do you mean, you had to leave me behind back then, and why did you wait over twenty-two years before you came back?"

Rose glanced at the Doctor, who for once looked like he wasn't going to start talking at about a hundred words per minute. It seemed that this time he was content to sit back let her talk. Wonderful. Well, here goes nothing. "The Doctor's spent a lot of time travelling in time," she began inwardly wincing at the awkward phrasing of that statement, "and he knows human history pretty well, including what we consider the future. He remembered what you're role in it was, and he didn't want to alter the timeline like it would have if he'd taken you with us. And then he wanted to show me what you've done here, so that I'd know what happened to you."

Again, the fluffy-haired guy was the one to start talking. "Oh come on, it's the future, how can you know it before it happens? It's impossible"

This guy was going to drive her nuts. "First time I traveled with the Doctor, he took me to watch Earth's sun explode and destroy the planet. Five million years in the future. We met the woman who called herself the last human, and she looked like a skin-colored trampoline with lipstick on. I nearly got burned to ashes twice when she sabotaged the space station we were on. By that time, all of you would have been dead for millions of years, and everything you'd done had been written down as history, then forgotten. The next place the Doctor took me was 1869, Cardiff, at Christmas and we met Charles Dickens. I nearly died there too, over a hundred years before I was born. I don't believe in impossible anymore."

That seemed to shock him into silence, and apparently no one else in the room knew what to say either. The quiet stretched on awkwardly, until the Doctor interrupted it by standing up and saying "Right then, Rose, we've seen what we came here for and it doesn't look like they have any tea or chips to offer, so are you ready to go?"

She jumped to her feet and took his hand. "Ready when you are, Doctor."

"You're leaving again?" Rodney, of course.

"Yep!" The Doctor replied. "We've got lots to do, a whole universe and all of time and space to see, and not a lot of time to do it in. So can we get an escort back to my TARDIS, or do we have to start running for it?


End file.
